Published on 12, July, 2020
Our daughter has just been provisionally diagnosed with High Functioning Autism. She is struggling at school and to take the pressure of she is now studying 2 A levels (and supposedly an EPQ for extra UCAS points)
We are very near UCAS applications but she is struggling (as are we) to get her head around what to do. She had always set her heart on a caring profession (and has flitted between a midwife and paediatric nurse). She has now decided against this and is thinking of Sociology (mainly driven by the fact is a vocational degree and doesn't want to make the wrong choice too early)
As parents we are concerned about the whole process - and worry that her degree choice is being made on a whim - her strengths are not in self-study, organisation and interpreting facts and forming opinions. She is very good at fact-based stuff - and seems to prefer learning by doing - so a more practical subject ought to be better. We even worry that University is the right thing for her to do at the moment - the diagnosis is very recent and she has had mental health issues over past year severely affecting her education
Would be interested in anyone who has (or is) going through the same thing
It is usual for students to be able to change subjects within a school or faculty during, or at the end of, their first year. Exeptionally, students might be able to jump between faculties and essentially start a completely new degree, but they effectively lose their first semester and then take an additional semester at the end of their degree. My daughter did this, moving from Fine Art to Music and Audio Technology, a much more maths and engineering based subject. She finished with a first-class degree, so it did not affect her outcome. This is just to point out that a degree choice need not be entirely binding for the final degree subject. My daughter also had a lot of problems with her A-levels and dropped out for a year before starting alternative qualifications.